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Creating the right climate to fight global warming

Ever since the world’s leading industrialised nations pledged to take tough action to combat global warming at the Kyoto climate change conference in 1997, they have been squabbling over how to meet the targets they signed up to.

European Voice

11/1/00, 5:00 PM CET

Updated 4/12/14, 6:11 AM CET

Three years on, they have yet to agree any concrete rules to govern their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, despite repeated warnings that they will fall far short of fulfilling the promises they made in Japan unless they take radical action soon.

Later this month, signatories to the Kyoto Protocol will meet again in The Hague to try to settle their differences over how to achieve the goals set out in the accord. Yet even though the ‘COP-6’ talks will take place against a backdrop of increasingly extreme weather conditions across the globe, with storms and flooding in western Europe and severe droughts in Africa, their chances of making significant progress appear slim.

The EU has so far focused much of its energy on criticising other signatories to the Kyoto accord for not doing enough to meet their commitments. Its concern is understandable given that climate change is a global problem which cannot be tackled without coordinated action by all the world’s industrialised nations. The Union is also right to insist that countries should meet the bulk of their targets by taking action at home instead of relying on mechanisms like emissions trading to do the job for them. The use of such ‘flexible mechanisms’ may be part of the answer in the short term but it will not be enough in the long run as the world’s developing countries race to catch up with their industrialised neighbours.

However, even within the EU itself, there are still divisions over the best way forward, prompting suspicions that the bloc’s message to the rest of the world is ‘do as we say, not as we do’. The Parliament’s rapporteur on the European Climate Change Programme, Portuguese Christian

Democrat MEP Jorge Moreira da Silva, argues that the best way for the Union to demonstrate leadership on this issue is to spend less time attacking other countries such as the US for their shortcomings and more proving to the rest of the world that is capable of meeting its own targets – and prepared to take the tough action required to do so.

EU politicians pay a great deal of lip service these days to the notion that the Union must be seen to be tackling the issues of greatest concern to its citizens instead of focusing much of its attention on seemingly arcane arguments over obscure institutional issues – and opinion polls have shown that the public believes protecting the environment is one area where the EU can make a real difference.

If governments really want to show that they mean what they say, they must demonstrate that the Union is ready and able to act. Only then will they earn the right to tell other countries what they should be doing to live up to their promises.